Our web host is moving their data center this weekend. Starting at midnight on Friday we may be down for 24-48 hours. With the track record of our host company, I’m predicting it will be more towards the latter, if not more. Of course I haven’t gotten moved over to a new company yet, but at least I’ve picked the winner.

He’s not included on this poll of favorite heartthrob skaters from madmoiselle at Team Sugar. Who is this (platinum) user Madmoiselle? She’s got almost 8,000 sugar points, so she must be able to buy a lot of virtual gifts. (This one is for landpiratemafia! Meme! Meme! Meme! Meme! Meme! Hawt!) Oh yeah, I need to mention Tony Hawk so I can add this post to the category.

Or, “Yes, but was he wearing his airbag?” All joking aside, this technology is pretty amazing. Who ever thought that airbags could be adapted for motorcycles. Is it just a matter or time before this trickles down to skateparks? These things aren’t always as useful as the promise is. Remember the space age polymer that would harden on impact? It is being used in beanies for snowboarding as a potential helmet replacement, among other things. I talked to an individual who works for a certain Northwest based sporting goods manufacturer who says that most real world tests had results where the application turned out to be essentially worthless due to outside factors. Who cares? I just want to watch a video of a guy on a motorcycle crashing with airbags coming out of his helmet!

Speaking of the resurrection of our Lord Jebus, and finishing up the Easter Roundup is this shot of Stephen Baldwin at the LA airport carrying a religious-themed skateboard with wheels that are large enough to be some sort of miracle. Verily, His wheels were just big enough for street skating, but when he got to the top of the mount, he worried not, for a miracle had turned the 40mm to 100mm, and there was enough urethane to feed everyone’s hunger for asphalt. This isn’t the first time Stephen has pulled out the skateboard at an airport, and he’s starting to look like an old woman. [Source: Gawker]

Skateboarding really is dead! A disappointing marketing turnout for Valentine’s Day has been followed up with a similarly anemic skateboarding Easter. The Scooby-Doo extreme Easter baskets are nowhere to be seen this year, and so far the only thing I’ve found is a pocket skateboard game (Skate Jam) that is housed in the chassis of a VW hippie bus. I saw it with the rest of the easter paraphernalia at Target. For some reason they chose to market these with a few Easter Eggs on the packaging, which is odd. There’s nothing inherently Easter-ish about VW vans. Makes me think they will drop well below $6 in a few days. That rabbit is something I had laying around from the 80’s.

So I was hanging out at the mall, bringing my kid to see some really lame Shriners clowns who were out stumping for the upcoming circus. Of course you can’t go to the mall without surveying the goods and services available. There were two major department stores with skateboards as display props. I borrowed a point and shoot camera on the spot and did a little investigating.

Nau clothing company (not just another outdoor company) is using skateboarding on the entry page to their web site, as well as some banner ads in rotation elsewhere. They’ve got sustainable design philosophies, partnerships, and a code of conduct all designed to get you to spend $148 on pair of jeans. They are Portland based, and they’ve done a good job of making the images as non-location specific as possible, but it looks like Pier Park to me. Wouldn’t be the first time. Actually, before I got kicked off Youtube, I was preparing to upload a razor scooter commercial shot at Newberg! Visit the Nau web site to buy expensive skateboarding jeans, archived for posterity after the jump. – Thanks to Ben T for the tip.

A skate photographer only gets a few lucky breaks in his or her life. (Actually, where are the female photogs?) All my time and effort has paid off now that I gained secret access to Danny Way’s training facility for his upcoming skateboard mega jump of the Luxor Hotel and Casino. I’m headed to the big time now. Exclusive pictures after the jump.

My money is on fake because the acceleration up the “vert” wall seems too fast, it’s on MySpace, and the clip is so short. You’d think if you actually caught this on video you’d keep the record button pressed, maybe talk to the driver… The imperfect landing was a nice touch though. Prove me wrong. – Thanks to Damienhialation for the tip.

My web host (IXWebhosting) sucks the big one. I’ve had repeated problems and headaches using them over the past couple of years. Yesterday we were down for about 16 hours before we got back online, and I had to spend almost four hours on the phone getting it fixed. Now that we are back online everything is glacially slow. IXWebhosting is preparing for a move at the end of the month and they are experiencing some major technical difficulties that they won’t come clean about. Expect the site to be spotty and unresponsive until I get switched over to a new host, hopefully by the end of the week. I apologize for the suckitude.